Dorianne Laux’s Life on Earth, Reviewed by Lee Rossi
Dorianne Laux Life on Earth W.W. Norton & Company, 2024 Reviewer: Lee Rossi With Life on Earth, her seventh full-length volume of poetry, Dorianne Laux offers again her truest poetic self. Throughout her career she has been consistently provocative and consistently enjoyable, sharing with her readers her enthusiasm for life and language. This book continues […]
Rosa Lane’s Called Back, Reviewed by Frank Paino
Rosa Lane Called Back Tupelo Press Reviewer: Frank Paino If you’re anything like me, your introduction to Emily Dickinson came when you were still in grade school, and included “facts” about the poet’s life which painted her as a reclusive spinster whose failed heterosexual romances drove her to self-imposed imprisonment in her Amherst, Massachusetts bedroom […]
Michael Spring – hospital walls, 3am
hospital walls, 3am (after the pulmonary embolism) the walls are made of wings rustling inside the white paint my wife is asleep in a foldout chair in the corner of the room my body is sunk into pillows facing a dark TV screen – a black mirror – I watch myself and her and all […]
Mara Lee Grayson – Cross-Country Hydatidiform
Cross-Country Hydatidiform Passing thoughts: Knife first, then turtle shell. Brown cow rubs white face against a fence. Woman, almost middle aged and ill situated there as any oil well in nameless green rurality, both dense and spare: if not lost, she is alone for words among the cluster trees that leave her feather-tongued and prickly […]
Catherine Gonick – Sister Mary Joseph Serves Lunch in Ávila
Sister Mary Joseph Serves Lunch in Ávila Fierce Mother Teresa and quiet Juan, her much younger, but equally powerful protégé, can’t stop themselves from levitating like thousand-layer cakes raised by inner fires when they talk of God. Bearing trays of steaming sancocho I see them as I pass on my way to the refectory where […]
